Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today we are taking a look at Bruna, Light of Alabaster!

Bruna is a six mana 5/5 with flying and vigilance that whenever they attack or block, you may attach to it any number of Auras on the battlefield and you may put onto the battlefield attached to them any number of Aura cards that could enchant it from your graveyard and/or hand.

Game Plan

When I was initially looking at Bruna, I had overlooked her ability to potentially take any Aura on the battlefield that could enchant her, which included Auras our opponents control. All of the sudden this had changed a lot of how I thought of Bruna.

What’s more, we can choose any number of enchantments from the battlefield, graveyard, and hand which means that there is a bevy of Aura’s that we can choose from that provide a whole host of effects that allow Bruna to become a monster on the battlefield.

Support

What we need to do first is make sure that we can get the Aura’s where we need them to be.

Three Dreams allows us to look for up to three Auras with different names and put them into our hand, which allows us to find the three most ideal Auras we need for the situation in order for us to attach them to Bruna as soon as possible.

Sage of Mysteries is an interesting card to include because they have a Constellation ability in that whenever an enchantment we enters the battlefield under our control then we can have target player mill two cards. While we would want that to target our opponents, we get better use out of it if we target ourselves in order to get some Auras into the graveyard.

Since we are in blue we also have access to some amazing card draw and card selection, Thirst for Meaning being one of the better options for us because it allows us to draw three cards and discard two cards unless we discard an enchantment card. Faithful Mending also works well for us because we gain 2 life, draw two cards and then discard two cards with a Flashback attached for good measure.

Fact or Fiction can also work really well for us since we reveal the top five cards of our library and have our opponent separate them into two piles and we put one into our hand and the other into the graveyard. So long as there are Auras in one pile, it doesn’t really matter where they go, so long as they get somewhere we can access them.

As far as what Auras we want, well that’s where we can go in a wide number of directions. Combat Research has it so that when the creature deals combat damage to a player then we draw a card and if the enchanted creature is legendary then it gets +1/+1 and ward 1.

Since Bruna cheats the Auras onto the battlefield, then we can also take a look at some of the more expensive Auras like Righteous Authority, which gives the enchanted creature +1/+1 for each card in their hand and draws us an additional card at the beginning of our draw step.

Twinblade Blessing for double strike, Indestructibility for indestructible, Holy Mantle for +2/+2 and protection from creatures, Security Bypass to make Bruna unblockable as long as they attack alone and when it deals combat damage to a player it connives, and Fool’s Demise so that if Bruna dies then it comes back onto the battlefield and when Fool’s Demise goes to the graveyard from the battlefield then it comes back to our hand.

For us to win the game we do have access to Corrupted Conscience which could let us steal a creature but more importantly gives the enchanted creature infect, All That Glitters and Ethereal Armor to give a massive boost for each enchantment we control, or Eldrazi Conscription for +10/+10 and annihilator 2 and for a flavor win as well.

Setbacks

Bruna can be a fairly hardy Commander to deal with because of the variety of Auras we have access to that can give protection or recursion, but that doesn’t mean that Bruna is untouchable.

Bruna is six mana, and in a fairly restrictive color pip combination that we need to make sure we can access. What’s more, our colors do have some trouble ramping, because while white is good at catch up ramp, we are still going to be slower than our opponents.

There is also that window of opportunity where an opponent can cast a removal spell before Bruna becomes enchanted with ways to keep her protected, which we need to make sure we can respond to in order to keep her on board before she gets removed.

Our deck cannot entirely be all Auras all the time, we need some pieces of interaction in order to make sure we can deal with board wipes and exile based removal, which means that we won’t always have an Aura that we can attach.

While Bruna can cheat Auras in when she blocks. she is just one creature. We still need some board presence in order to not get completely blown out of the water from a go wide aggressive deck, and while we do have plenty of ways to gain life to prevent us from dying, that still doesn’t prevent us from losing via Commander Damage.

Bracket Rating: High 3, Low 4

I do think that Bruna has the potential of being a very powerful deck that can win fairly consistently if you can get her into play as soon as possible.

Auras Commanders do tend to run the same few Auras, but Bruna does allow for more variety of Auras that you can run in order to make the deck more than just All That Glitters all the time. There are some weird and expensive to cast Auras out there that you can swap in and out to adjust the power level of this deck.

If you wanted to you can make Bruna a fair low bracket Commander, but you can also convert her to a decently higher bracket just as easily. The only major restrictions to deal with is making sure that you can handle the interaction speed of higher brackets as well as making sure you can cast Bruna and have some way to protect her.

Thank you for reading, see you all tomorrow!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual